06 October 2008

Effects Of The Cabinet Shuffle

"The Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform - a mere 15 months old itself - will be dismembered. Power in its nuclear, fuel-poverty and save-the-planet form goes with Ed. But Hilary Benn, back at what remains of diminished Defra, is left with a rag-bag that doesn't cohere. For what, after all, does climate change mean in practical terms? It means drastic change to our environment. It means flood defences, food crises, the death of wildlife and, intrinsically, of our way of life. Government has an agency to cover that crucial beat. It is called the Environment Agency: and Benn remains its sponsoring minister. Yet now, bizarrely, that agency's role is chucked into the latest mix. Nobody knows how climate change - in Ed's new empire - fits with green monitoring and enforcement over at what's left at Benn's."